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MADAME 

MARGOT 


A ROMANCE OF 
OLD CHARLESTON 
BY 

JOHN BENNETT 










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MADAME MARGOT 






Madame Margot 


A Grotesque Legend 
of Old Charleston 


BY 

JOHN BENNETT / 



NEW YORK 
THE CENTURY CO. 
1921 

Qfi[ARJLICSTOlN 
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Copyright, 1921, by 
John Bennett 

Copyiijpht, 1933, by, 

JeuN Bb^nett 


Printed in U. S. A. 


NOV 20 IS33' 


©CIA 67355 ' 




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TO 


. . . You, and you, and you, 

. . . who have gone greatly here 
In friendship, making some delight, some true 
Song in the dark, some story against fear. 

. . . Lovers yet shall tell the nightingale 
Sometimes a song that we of old time made. 

And gossips gathered at the twilight ale 
Shall say, “Those two were friends,” or “Unafraid 
Of bitter thoughts were those because they loved 
Better than most.” 

. . . There in the midst of all those words shall be 
Our names, our ghosts, our inunortality. 

— John Dhinkwater. 


The above is reprinted by permission of the publishers. 


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MADAME MARGOT 



MADAME MARGOT 


In an age so glorious, so rich and 
fine, and so be-starred with splendor 
that one almost forgets the bottomless 
abyss into which it plunged at last, 
there lived a woman in Charleston of 
whom a very odd story is told. 

The languid, lovely, tired old town 
was then a city brave and gay, with 
Mediterranean manners and Caribbean 
ways. 

The perfume of ten thousand flowers 
drifted upon the winds, which came and 
went over a thousand gardens, ebbing 
and flowing like the tide. 

Clouds of snowy gold and roses rolled 
3 


MADAME MARGOT 


across the sky, like the vast rotundas 
of a city builded of colored ivory. 
Slowly rising overhead, in windy and 
ethereal masses, they stood, carvings of 
pale porphyry upon a turquoise wall. 
The earth was transfigured with beauty. 

It was a golden age, when all things 
were fair; nothing had grown old; even 
the tragic and the terrible were comely 
then. Wonder lay on everything. 
Merely to exist was to be happy. It 
was a world of unextinguished youth; 
life was brimful to the lips with delight. 

In the gardens rare flowers bloomed, 
and rare fruits ripened, — pomegranates, 
oranges, medlars, figs, jujubes, and the 
purple Indian peach; and among the 
flowers, like winged flames, small and 
bright, sped the harlequins, the painted 
nonpareils, delicately beating the soft 
wind with their pied wings; while in 
4 


MADAME MAEGOT 


the pomegranate-tree, among the dull 
bronze fruit, the mocking-bird sang his 
love and rapture. Through the green- 
hedged close, women, beautiful and 
stately, paced the shade, with men be- 
side them, slender and straight, passion- 
ate and haughty, with fierce, bright 
eyes as ardent as the goshawk’s and as 
bold; and lovely girls, with dark hair 
and skins of alabaster, as graceful and 
as timid as fawns, and with fawn’s eyes, 
slipped among the green leaves like 
flowers ahve. 

Those were charmed days indeed. 
The town has changed since then. The 
world seems to have grown weary and 
gray, and the hearts of men bitter. The 
young were younger then; the old not 
so sorry for everything as they have 
been since. Then, somehow, it seemed 
to be always summer morning, mom- 
5 


MADAME MARGOT 


ing before the sun had burned the world 
to a dun crisp with his meridian heat, 
scorching bitter and blinding bright; 
before the advent of gasping afternoon 
with its languid leafage and evapor- 
ated sap. The calendar seemed to have 
paused among the daffodils, between 
the jessamine and the June, in that 
paradise of the year. The delicate and 
virginal camellia bloomed then, untar- 
nished by rough wind or rain; its petals 
were sweet, which since then have grown 
so bitter. The elm-trees did not then 
bloom thrice for one green coat. And 
no one ever paused to think that no 
good and lovely thing exists on earth 
without its corresponding shadow. 

The world was full of the sound of 
sweet, flute-like voices of young women 
calling after their lovers; and the sing- 
ing of small birds made slender, pleas- 
6 


MADAME MARGOT 


ant melodies among the cool myrtles. 
Life was simpler; perhaps more child- 
like though more passionate. Two who 
loved each other might walk together, 
hand in hand, along the path, singing 
their happiness, without reproach, save, 
perchance, from some lugubrious, gray- 
bearded presbyter mourning, among 
mossy tombstones, life’s evanescence. 

And happy youth was without a 
fault, unless it were a trivial one, some 
peche mignon, a guileless, guiltless, girl- 
ish sin, like kissing oneself in the look- 
ing-glass for lack of another lover. 

In all the town there were none so 
pretty, none so graceful or so sweet, as 
the golden girls of San Domingo. 
They flowed along the windy streets, 
their turbans nodding, like a stream of 
tulips. They fluttered down the byways 
in their white muslin dresses like bevies 
7 


MADAME MARGOT 


of butterflies. The loveliness of their 
slender bodies and the beauty of their 
youthful faces were far beyond all dull 
description; they were a bed of tiger- 
lilies in the sun. The earth loved the 
tread of their flying feet, which seemed 
to be forever dancing pastourelles ; and 
the narrow lanes of the city laughed 
with the lilt of their Creole tongue. 


Among the golden San Domingans 
the loveliest of all admittedly was Mar- 
guerite Lagoux, the milliner, by her 
patronage called Rita, by her familiars 
Margoton, by envious rivalry Madame 
Margot; and, after all was over and 
done, known merely as Old Mother Go- 
go. 

Hers was glorious physical loveliness 
in its fullest maturity. It was in an 
8 


MADAME MARGOT 


hour of inspiration the indolent god of 
beauty drew the lines on which her body 
was built. 

Her passionate, rich-colored, hand- 
some face was like a line from an old 
enchantment which took men’s souls 
captive, then cast them away without 
the least regret, or with a Circean spell 
turned them into beasts. Her neck was 
a deep-colored, ivory tower poised per- 
fectly over her breast. The dazzling, 
orange-tawny skin of her broad bust 
turned to golden-russet before it 
reached her cheeks, and was there 
flushed to dusky rose, like the skin of a 
ruddy-gold peach. In the burnt splen- 
dor of her cheek the darkly eloquent 
blood in her veins made its golden proc- 
lamation. Her mouth was long and 
strangely curved like a retroverted 
bow; the lips of a queer fruit-color, not 
9 


MADAME MARGOT 

crimson, carmine, nor magenta, but a 
little of all three. The upper lip was 
brief to a fault, and curled back on it- 
self like a rich-pulped fruit which has 
parted in ripening. The full under-lip 
cast a heavier shade than the lips the old 
masters chose, when they painted a pic- 
ture of the Madonna. Her hair, like 
a dark, uncertain cloud, fell down in 
heavy coils, gathered and knotted at 
the nape of the neck, bound there in a 
golden net; or lay in an unfilleted 
band across the broad, low brow, drawn 
back into braids over her ears, or col- 
lected into a turban tied with peculiar 
dexterity. Her body was cast in a glo- 
rious mould : she was tall ; in figure per- 
fect, and full of a stately, tiger-like 
grace, the envy of other women. She 
moved, when she walked, as an empress 
might if heaven but gave her grace, with 
10 


MADAME MARGOT 


an exquisite, perfect motion, devoid of 
every appearance of effort, — ^not strid- 
ing, but seeming to glide like a swan 
swimming on untroubled water. In the 
sluggish grace of her heavy lips and 
deep-lidded, brooding eyes, she was as 
full of an indolent, sleepy beauty as 
midsummer afternoon. Dressed in 
bright merino, crimson, orange, and 
blue, with a kerchief of blood-colored 
silk around her head bound in oriental 
fashion, beads of amber around her 
neck, and in each ear a hoop of gold, 
she looked like a great golden lily dusted 
with sang-dieu. 

One day she was the hly; the next a 
yellow rose; and the next she was a 
tulip, — gold, crimson, purple and black. 
She was a Caribbean summer incarnate, 
of flower-blooms, thunder and gold. The 
passing traveler, seeing her, stopped 
11 


MADAME MARGOT 


while he caught his breath. There was 
something about her commanded atten- 
tion besides her remarkable beauty. One 
spoke of Dude Poincignon casually; 
but one spoke of Rita Lagoux with an 
accent. 


Of all the milliners of her day Margot 
was first beyond compare. Her taste 
was perfect; her instinct for color was 
never at fault; her choice of fabrics ex- 
quisite. None equaled her in dexterity; 
she was like a marvelous spider weav- 
ing webs of gossamer. Those who 
sought beauty found it; her patrons 
were patrician; all of the very best em- 
ployed her art; she had no successful 
competitor ; beside her Eloise Couesnon 
was esteemed but maladroit. 

Margot’s shop was in King street, 
12 


MADAME MARGOT 

near Mignot’s Garden, a little above 
the Bend. She lived in a little alley 
known as Lilac lane, a narrow, crooked, 
private path between two large es- 
tates, which rambled into the inter- 
space like a brown brook into a wood. 
Beneath high green hedges it wandered 
into the solitude, growing narrower as 
it went, until the hedge boughs, meet- 
ing, knit themselves together, interlac- 
ing their elastic, leafy twigs. There the 
baffled foot-path seemed to lose its way 
and to abandon every purpose for which 
foot-paths are designed, ran on a little, 
hesitated, crept on again uncertainly, 
then gave up hope and disappeared in a 
green perplexity. The unfamiliar trav- 
eler paused here, bewildered, and 
turned back to find a bolder thorough- 
fare; familiar feet alone pressed on 
through Lilac lane. 

13 


MADAME MARGOT 

Where the strait way vanished into 
the wilderness stood Margot’s cottage, 
tucked snug as a plum stone in a plum. 
Around it was a garden hedged by box 
and bay. Of all the hedges in Lilac 
lane the highest were Margot’s. They 
rose around her garden in an impene- 
trable thicket, tall, dark-tangled, dense 
and old, their green tops tossing against 
the blue beyond the reach of the hedg- 
er’s bill. Within lay a little tranquil 
space, withdrawn alike from curious 
gaze and the town’s brawl, and over- 
shadowed by the wide boughs of two 
great magnolias, whose drowsy shade 
fell heavily on the sleepy oleanders and 
over the rows of tulips below, that lifted 
up their golden cups and filled the air 
with odor. Here day and night flowed 
by in undisturbed serenity; all noise was 
hushed and tumult quelled; the shyest 
14 


MADAME MARGOT 


wild birds nested here in perfect confi- 
dence, fear cast away and foes forgot. 
No place in all the town seemed more se- 
cure from rude intrusion. No appari- 
tion came by night, no terror by day ; so 
quiet it was, so full of peace, it seemed 
a sanctuary withdrawn from the inter- 
rupting clash and rude alarms of the 
troubled world, — its tranquillity that of 
a convent close, with little, distant, ring- 
ing bells, recurrent chimes and subdued 
voices, muffled by distance, as of nuns 
chanting an office in the peaceful choir 
of a green-nooked nunnery. 


Margot Lagoux had a daughter; her 
name was Gabrielle. 

Though Margot was lovely, Gabrielle 
was lovelier. They differed in beauty 
as pompadour-pink differs from brier- 
15 


MADAME MARGOT 


rose. Margot’s was a golden beauty; 
Gabrielle’s an ivory loveliness. Mar- 
got was a pottery figurine moulded 
with marvelous skill ; Gabrielle a statu- 
ette of exquisite porcelain. Margot was 
like the summer sun, dazzling, opulent, 
sumptuous; Gabrielle like the young 
spring moon in her slender loveliness; 
the lines of her flowed one into the other 
like the lines of a song. Her hands 
were delicate and fine, their touch as 
light as flowers blown by the wind, 
which drift like a whisper across the 
face of the passer-by. Her feet were 
arched like a Spanish girl’s; her an- 
kles were the loveliest things that ever 
sandal-ribbon bound; she walked like 
the wind of an April morning through 
meadows after rain. 

Her face, with its delicate high cheek- 
bones, was like the fair flower of Nor- 
16 


MADAME MARGOT 


mandy; but her beauty was not West- 
ern, ’twas Eastern ; it was like the pale 
Persian roses which blow by the gray- 
marbled waterways among the fallen 
pillars of the forgotten gardens of 
Istakhr, — roses of yesterday, full of 
yesterday’s unbearable loveliness, yes- 
terday’s happiness, yesterday’s tragedy, 
—fragrant with passionate, heart-break- 
ing perfume, piercingly sweet, with the 
pathos of swift-passing beauty, far 
keener than that of ruins and age. She 
was of a loveliness such as sometimes 
comes out of India unbumed by the In- 
dian sun, of which dreamers make 
dreams of unforgettable beauty. 

Her slender young body was like a 
piece of perfect ivory laid away to be 
carved. Her long, dark, tangled eye- 
lashes fell upon her cheeks like sudden 
gusts of darkening rain ; her cheeks were 
17 


MADAME MARGOT 


japonica-color; her lips pale pomegran- 
ate-red; her hair ebony; her temples 
were traced with crocus-blue. 

Her cheeks japonica-color? They 
were the hue of peach flowers at dusk: 
God who gave them knew whence came 
both peach flower color and dusk. 

At every breath there came and went 
beneath her transparent skin a shadowy 
crimson under-dusk, ebbing and flowing 
with the beat of her heart like a somber, 
twilit tide, — San Domingo’s sang de 
crepuscule; and through her fingers the 
sunhght shone with a golden radiance 
like the glow of a rose through a glass 
of madeira. 

She might have been sister to Sche- 
herazade in her exquisite, aquiline, high- 
born loveliness, a patrician beauty 
strangely like that of old French ro- 
mance. Far and away beyond compare 
18 


MADAME MARGOT 


she was the loveliest girl in St. Finbar’s 
parish; and the faces of the young girls 
in St. Finbar’s made that ancient, dim, 
gray parish bloom like the gardens of 
Paradise. 

God, who knows everything, knows 
whence she had her exquisite, slender 
body, her aristocratic face, the dusky 
crimson tide, the touch of fantasy which 
made her lovely as a strain of wild, pas- 
sionate music played on the deep strings 
of a gipsy violin. 

For, as the rarest beauty remains im- 
perfect without a touch of strangeness, 
without something to haunt and to fret 
the mind, forbidding it to forget, there 
was a something almost, if not quite, 
fantastic, in Gabrielle’s loveliness — a 
touch of irregularity difficult to define — 
making her beauty more significant 
through being peculiar, more poignant 
19 


MADAME MARGOT 


through being strange. Something in- 
definite and conjectural tinged her be- 
ing ; the ghost of a vaguely intricate and 
tragical imphcation beneath her bright 
young innocence lurked shadowy and 
malign. Had her beauty been less per- 
fect this, perhaps, had been less notable. 
Revealed in a casual attitude, for a mo- 
ment startling in vividness, now for a 
moment it was lost, and now stole forth 
again in the stress of unstudied emotion 
to accent a passing mood. 

As one who, looking into her mirror, 
sees a face there not her own, Margot 
perceived in her daughter’s face an in- 
tricately blended likeness, to banish 
which into forgetfulness she strove des- 
perately in vain, — ^the recollection of a 
wild, sweet, irrevocable hour whose 
memory was fear. Gabrielle’s beauty 
made her tremble. 

20 


MADAME MARGOT 


It is a perilous privilege for a girl to 
possess loveliness rising above her sta- 
tion in life; there is a price always to be 
paid for it, sorrow the common fee ; such 
a heritage of beauty often proves but a 
legacy of shame, — a beauty built for de- 
struction, a loveliness for scorn; hag- 
gard wisdom reaps in tears what inno- 
cence sowed with laughter. 

There was a thought from which 
Margot shrank as from a draught of 
poison: Gabrielle degraded and deso- 
late. There was nothing to her more 
precious than her daughter’s innocence ; 
nothing so important as her earthly 
happiness ; these seemed to Margot even 
more necessary than her eternal peace. 

Yet ever a shadow hung over her 
child, from cradle to grave; her delicate 
grace and refinement were signatures 
of dread. Margot’s eyes hunted from 
21 


MADAME MARGOT 


side to side as do a deer’s hard pressed 
by the dogs — can one elude destiny? 

Where were the lovely and the fair 
she had known in her own youth? Dead, 
long ago; the graveyard sand lay cold 
upon their lips; their passion and their 
sweetness were forgotten long ago. 
Margot knew that youth and summer 
night are made for ecstasy. She knew, 
too, that in forgotten graveyards are 
many unmarked graves of hapless 
beauty. Looking into the mirror where 
life is stripped of its illusions, and truth 
stands stark and bare in its unmitigated 
ugliness, panic terror seized Margot. 

Was there no refuge, no escape, nor 
safety anywhere; no retreat, nor har- 
bor, but in hopeless longing; always 
the far-off lightning and threatening of 
storm? Peering into the future she 
was filled with apprehension. In 
22 


MADAME MARGOT 


dreams she saw Gabrielle’s innocence 
hanging over a black abyss; in dreams 
saw a fawn torn by ravening wolves. 
She awoke, starting up, crying out! 
There was nothing but the night. 
Yet she arose from her bed, and, 
crouched by her crucifix, prayed for her 
daughter as she never had prayed for 
herself. 


At adolescence Gabrielle was a vision 
of delight. In temperament she was 
ardent as is a summer shower, which 
gives, when it gives, all that it has to 
give, in a rush of wind and rain. Un- 
spoiled by knowledge, unruined by 
folly, too innocent to be perplexed by 
life’s anxieties, her soul mistook Earth 
for the pathway to Paradise, and noth- 
ing as yet had discovered her error. 

23 


MADAME MARGOT 


With her each hour began afresh the 
tale of life, a long, sweet, glad surprise. 

Rose-winged days and golden nights 
were come to Gabrielle, whose feet stood 
at the smiling gate of the Primrose 
Way. But Margot’s days and nights 
were filled with passionate anxiety, as 
with increasing doubts and fears she 
confronted destiny. 

The inner house-door gave upon a 
little paved court, where two twisted 
old fig-trees grew, many-branched can- 
delabra, tipped in spring with green- 
leaved lights. Green-leaved shadows 
wavered below on a duck-pool’s marble 
bowl, stained green from the copper 
tenons which tied its stones together. 
Here ducks praised Jove with yellow 
bills, and splashed viridian wings. In 
the pool, glimmering, one saw the stuc- 
coed cottage-wall, on the irregular sur- 
24 


MADAME MARGOT 

face of which old colors showed in 
broken chequers through the new until 
the wall was patched with unpremedi- 
tated beauty. Across the pool the sil- 
very sunlight glimmered like a streak 
of flame. But the fairest thing reflected 
there was Gabrielle, dancing on the old 
stones which paved the court, — dances 
fantastic as her mood ; sarabands to the 
stately rhythm of odd old songs, delib- 
erately slow ; canzons whose pathos was 
lost in a pirouette; minuets which mi- 
micked the swallows overhead with their 
swift glissades among the trees and un- 
dulating sweeps among the flowers, — 
snatching the poppies as she passed, and 
thrusting them in her hair, and pausing 
at last like a wind-blown flower above 
her reflection in the pool, — Gabrielle, 
singing old songs by the world forgot- 
ten, — strains of wild beauty, that by 
25 


MADAME MARGOT 


wayward loveliness have a peculiar 
power to please, with old melodies, 
alluring and sweet ; songs such as 
long ago stole the souls of saints de- 
termined upon salvation, and gave 
themes for many troubadour lays, of 
which, though all are lovely, the greater 
part are sad, being memories of loveli- 
ness departed into the dust : one of life’s 
paradoxes, that the memory of beauty 
should be bitter. 

Here, remote from the curious world, 
preserved by the cloistral hedges from 
prying indiscretion, flowed her secluded 
existence. Few ever saw her. Such as 
by chance observed her through some 
green interstice, dazzled by her beauty, 
hurried off to spread the tale of an en- 
chanted princess in an enchanted wood; 
hedge-balked and bewildered, few had 
ever seen her twice; by which she had 
26 


MADAME MARGOT 


been the more thought of through being 
the less seen. 

Many had sought the courtyard; but 
none had found the way. Margot kept 
it a solitude lest Gabrielle suffer cor- 
ruption, and around her maintained a 
veritable nunnery of care, hovered over 
her, and kept her as close withdrawn as 
a novice in a convent-garth. 

But beauty cannot be sequestered al- 
ways safely anywhere. Cloistral life is 
very well for souls of cloistral nature 
and of the convent sort; but youth and 
spring hate convents, and will have 
life’s novitiate, or none. There is a crev- 
ice in every hedge, no matter how tall 
or how thick it may be, and through it, 
ever, Gabrielle peeps. 


Spring followed winter ; May’s warm 
27 


MADAME MARGOT 


slow, yellow, moonlit nights were come. 

Then Gabrielle grew tired and white. 
Her hand became tremulous; her light 
foot stumbled; she left off dancing in 
the garden. She sighed wistfully; her 
song ceased ; her mouth showed scarcely 
a smile’s wasted ghost. Her eyes, like 
those of a wounded creature, followed 
everywhere; her tears flowed at noth- 
ing. She grew as languid as a wither- 
ing flower. The light of her seemed 
going out. The pallor of her face and 
the feverish luster of her eyes startled 
and frightened Margot. 

Days dragged a laggard length; 
night still more oppressed her. She lay 
awake, whispering with dry lips she 
knew not what; calling she knew not 
whom; her trembling hands pressed 
against her breast. Fancies for which 
she found no name, thoughts for which 
28 


MADAME MARGOT 


she had no words, and visions inexpres- 
sible, would not let her sleep. Night 
after night she lay awake, consuming 
the hours with wonder; or, if she slept, 
awoke in tears, fell asleep to tears 
again, and waking, tear-wet, trem- 
bling, with darkened lids and drawn 
face, grew, daily worse. 

Vague, moody wants annoyed her; 
the night was harassed by melancholy 
dreams; the day vexed with formless 
fancies. 

Walking alone in the garden, answer- 
less questionings beset and frightened 
her; she listened where there was noth- 
ing to be heard ; stared where there was 
nothing to be seen; found peace no- 
where. 

Her heart ached with unreasoning 
pain; she grew as gusty as a storm; the 
speechless, inexplicable wonder within 
29 


MADAME MARGOT 

her breast throbbed like a festered 
thorn. 

Margot too we^U knew) the cause: 
there was but one alleviation. 


Spring, with its universal song, from 
grove and garden lifted up its deathless 
melody of bloomy verdure and warm- 
breathed sweetness. All living crea- 
tures voiced the universal theme : 
“Rejoice with the partner of thine heart 
in the happy days of thy youth!” 

The blue dove moaned out his heart’s 
desire ; the copper beetle wooed and won 
his lady in the dust; butterflies and 
dragon-flies glittered in the wind, happy 
in their airy ecstasy — ^they fluttered 
among the hedges; they sported among 
the flowers — and all the earth rejoiced 
in having its heart’s desire. Thrush and 
30 


MADAME MARGOT 


mocker sang, “Passion, passion . . . 
heart-breaking passion to their pretty 
feathered paramours. From every 
spray the vireo cried shrill, in shreds of 
melody, “Heart’s desire! Heart’s de- 
sire!” In the fragrant green-hay the 
painted bunting’s love-call rang inces- 
santly; while from the tufted grove 
arose the stirring chant of earth’s uni- 
versal choir, the canticle, all passionate 
and shrill, of “Love, love, love!” and yet 
again of “Love!” 

How can one keep it from the heart 
of youth, that, all imknowing, yet numb 
with longing, breathlessly awaits its 
coming, and trembles hke a leaf with 
the wordless yearning of unrecognized 
desire. 

Gabrielle was intoxicated with the 
passion of her own heart, without an 
object or an aim; her throat was almost 
31 


MADAME MARGOT 


choked with youth’s sweet, innocent de- 
sire ; and, ever, within her shaking 
heart, the questioning wonder grew. 

“Mother,” she said wistfully, “what 
is it fills the world with music day and 
night? What is it makes the whole 
world sing?” 

“Happiness,” replied Margot, “and 
joy of the spring.” 

“Happiness?” rejoined Gabrielle. 
“If it be happiness, why does it make 
my heart ache? Why does spring hurt 
me so?” 

Margot, startled, sat staring, wrung 
with sudden fear. 

“And what is this love of which every 
one sings — ^we women most of all?” 

“The source of all wretchedness. 
Leave it alone!” cried Margot. She 
looked at her daughter in terror. 

“But,” replied Gabrielle, wondering, 
32 


MADAME MARGOT 


“if love be the source of all wretched- 
ness, why is its song so sweet?” 

“Because fools have their folly!” 
cried Margot. “Love-songs are sweet 
to a lover, as folly is dear to a fool. 
Worship thy God,” she said harshly, 
“and leave foolishness to the fool!” 

“Love — foolishness?” said Gabrielle, 
puzzled. “You told me that God is 
love!” She turned the riddle over and 
over in her mind. 

“What ails you?” asked Margot. 

“Nothing,” said Gabrielle. But a 
flush stole up her cheeks. “How does 
a woman know. Mother, that she loves, 
so that she may say certainly, ‘This is 
love’?” 

“By the utter despair that tears her 
heart in two.” 

“But, Mother,” protested Gabrielle, 
“they tell me that love is sweet!” 

33 


MADAME MARGOT 


“Sweet? As wormwood!” said Mar- 
got hoarsely. “It is nothing but fever 
and fret.” 

“Many I see who have it; but none 
who fret. Might I not know for myself 
a little of this pretty play of lovers and 
beloved?” besought Gabrielle. 

Margot looked at Gabrielle and 
trembled, seeing the shadow upon her, 
foreseeing the fate of her loveliness, 
perceiving indiscretion’s lips at the rim 
of the cup of terror. “What man has 
snared your silly heart?” she asked. 

Gabrielle stared at her. “Why should 
any man snare my heart?” she asked in 
pitiful wonder. “I have never harmed 
any man, nor any living thing.” She 
caught her breath. “Oh, Mother, feel 
my heart beating! It beats as if it 
would burst. Why does my heart beat 
so? Am I dying? Do you think that 
34 


MADAME MARGOT 


I must die? Yet, Mother, my heart is 
aching so that I would that I could die ! 
Is not what God made good . . . you 
told me that God was love . . . was not 
mankind made by God . . . and is not 
love the world’s delight?” 

“It is its direst misery,” said Margot 
bitterly. “God keep you from it. Two 
parts are pain, two sorrow, and the 
other two parts are death.” 

“I don’t fear death,” said Gabrielle. 
“Then why should I fear love?” 

“Because it is a lie,” cried Margot, 
beside herself. “I conjure you, by 
God’s sorrow, close your ears against 
it.” 

“How can I close my ears against it 
when I hear it in my sleep ?” 

Margot’s delight in her daughter’s 
beauty was turned into bitterness. 
“Peace!” she cried. “And leave me. 

35 


MADAME MARGOT 


All this will pass away.” But, deep 
within, her heart said, “Never!” Inno- 
cence will be indiscreet. Sin alone is 
always tclever. And in youth great 
things are lightly asked and lightly 
given. “Go!” she cried to Gabrielle. 

Gabrielle left the room. Margot 
buried her face in her hands. 

It is hard for woman to stand alone 
and to resist temptation forever. Soon 
or late the black moment comes ; reason 
is off guard; prudence abandons her; 
caution is thrown to the winds : passion 
betrays. Here is an irremediable dis- 
ease which baffles the skill of the phy- 
sicians. Margot recoiled as she faced 
the future. Time had become a terror. 
Burning tears flowed down her cheeks. 
There is no woe so sickening as the 
monotone of fear, the shuddering, in- 
terior sense of impending catastrophe. 

36 


MADAME MARGOT 


Nor is it eased by the strange apathy 
which is granted to the doomed. Mar- 
got groaned in an agony, half remorse, 
half apprehension. Could God set so 
foul a seal upon so fair a thing? 

Again on a day Gabrielle came in 
from the garden, her eyes dry-burning 
and famine-bright. “Mother, give me 
a lover!” she cried. “Nietta Pascault 
has one!” 

“Then alas and alack for Nietta Pas- 
cault!” cried Margot. 

“But, Mother, he called her his 
heart’s delight; she did not speak, but 
she kissed him; and he kissed her until 
he must have bruised her lips; yet she 
did not seem to care . . . rather she 
seemed to like it. And all he said was 
‘Love me! Love me!’ and all she said 
was ‘Yes,’ and ‘Yes!’ And when he 
kissed her she grew pale; I thought that 
37 


MADAME MARGOT 


she was dead, . . . but he held her in 
his arms, Mother, and kissed her again 
and again, as though he would kiss her 
back to life. Will kisses bring one back 
from the dead? For, Mother, suddenly 
she opened her eyes as if she lived only 
for love; and then all he said was ‘Love 
me!’ and all she said was ‘Yes!’ ” 

Margot’s heart fainted. 

Day after day Gabrielle knelt in the 
garden and plead for her heart’s desire. 
Night after night Margot crouched on 
her floor and prayed, in despair and 
agony, that it might not be given her. 
Heaven’s custodian mingled their pray- 
ers in fatal entanglement; one was an- 
swered, and one was not: he is respon- 
sible. 

Sunset lay on Margot’s garden. The 
paths still shimmered with the day’s 
38 


MADAME MARGOT 


heat, though the lax grass lifted in the 
shadows. Nameless perfumes wan- 
dered among the drowsily-bending 
flowers; the odor of warm boxwood 
rose from the hedge. The hedge stood 
black against the sky; in its glistening, 
fragrant deeps small birds moved swift- 
ly to and fro in curious agitation. 

Gabrielle, puzzling upon life’s un- 
answered riddle, stood listening to 
sounds beyond the hedge. Everywhere 
was the patter of hurrying feet, and the 
whisper of wordless laughter, mocking- 
ly borne on the evening wind. The air 
was full of the golden vision of light- 
footed maidens with fluttering gar- 
ments, flying through Lilac lane, 
pursued by ardent and breathless lovers, 
eagerly following where they fled. The 
sound of laughter floated back along 
the narrow way, and the little faint echo 
39 


MADAME MARGOT 


of flying feet. It was that time of the 
year when all maids are sweet as 
freshly gathered flowers, and all men 
are a little mad. Even the earth, drab 
clod, was astir with the ecstasy of ap- 
proaching night. 

Beneath the broad-houghed mag- 
nolia grew a pomegranate-tree whose 
branches shrouded the greater tree’s 
bole. The scarlet pomegranate flowers 
hung over Gabrielle; the green leaves 
folded her in. Faint color came fit- 
fully over her cheek; her eyes roamed 
restlessly through the garden, but found 
no solace there. As she stood thus, 
brooding on life’s inexplicable theme, 
she was aware of a sudden shadow which 
fell on the grass beside her, and turned 
in voiceless terror. 

There was a face in the green hedge, 
smiling, two butterflies hovering over 
40 


MADAME MARGOT 


it, — a lad’s face, laughing and debonair, 
with yellow hair curling around it like 
crisp little golden flames; his cheeks 
were as ruddy and smooth as a child’s; 
his eyes were blue as the morning, swift 
and bright ; the leaves stirred all around 
him as if to the beat of wings; there 
was confldence in his bearing, easy 
lordship and high pride. 

Gabrielle, startled and terrified, 
shrank back against the magnolia’s 
black bole, one trembling, hesitant hand 
extended in doubt. Speechless she 
stared at that bright, boyish face with 
its nimbus of sunlit, yellow hair, until 
her dry eyes gushed tears, dimming her 
sight, — stared in wonder and adoration. 

His eyes were audaciously bright as 
wild stars, incessantly roving, and 
alight with golden fire. He was tall, 
well-set and slender, with a beautiful, 
41 


MADAME MARGOT 


straight body; there was something 
godlike in his air as he leaned through 
the matted hedge, eagerly scanning her, 
— her pale rose cheeks, snowy gown, 
moth-green kerchief, her lips, her neck 
matching the ivory of the blossoms in 
her hair, — ^half-veiled by a screen of 
leafy green, dull gold and pomegranate 
flowers. 

She had bound her hair with a bit of 
gold braid which shone like an aureole 
round her brow, and in it had thrust two 
butterfly lilies, whiter than ivory; her 
eyes were wide open, round and un- 
winking, their frightened depths full of 
tears; her lips had fallen slightly apart 
to free her fluttering breath ; she sighed, 
a little, shuddering sigh, and crossed her 
hands upon her breast. Her beauty 
startled him: delicate-frail, almost 
translucent in the golden sun, she 
42 


MADAME MARGOT 


seemed a being not of flesh and gross 
mortality, but a spirit by enchantment 
made visible, a dryad out of the ancient 
wood, a maiden saint stepped out of a 
missal or fled from a chapel window, 
with a halo around her brow. With her 
head poised like a flower; her little, per- 
fect hands and feet; her ankles slim 
and beautiful; each line aristocratic; 
everything proclaiming patrician blood; 
nothing asserting a baser thing: saint, 
maid, dryad, nymph, or sprite, who 
could tell which? 

Silently drinking her loveliness he 
leaned through the hedge. Among the 
fire-colored flowers and green, her color 
was exquisite as the violet sky is, seen 
through yellow leaves. 

Again she sighed softly ; stared at his 
face, and shivered a little. Was it a 
god or a man in the hedge? Had he 
43 


MADAME MARGOT 


sprouted out of the boxwood, or fallen 
from the clouds ? 

The perfect beauty of her figure, out- 
lined on green by her thin white gown, 
charmed and enchanted him. He stared 
at her, trying to focus her face more 
clearly upon his sight; her loveliness 
struck him dumb. She seemed a statue 
of ivory, hung with garlands of gold, 
crimson and green, half-hidden by a 
rood-screen of shimmering emerald. It 
seemed to him that he looked on more 
than mortal beauty. 

Leaning forward a little, one hand 
outstretched, one clasping her throat, 
she watched his face with its golden hair 
aglow in the last red sunlight. How 
could she tell if it were a god or a man, 
— that face with its shimmering locks 
like living fire around it, a gleaming 
nimbus whose dancing flames were fash- 
44 


MADAME MARGOT 


ioned of burnished gold, a face like a 
blazing seraph’s, or Ariel’s? She 
looked at that proud young countenance 
in wordless adoration. 

Her own face was now intensely 
bright with the sunset’s declining glory. 
Into the crevice between her lips the 
sunshine had slipped; her lips were 
translucent; her mouth was aglow as if 
she breathed ethereal fire. 

Suddenly he drew his breath with a 
sharply audible sound; for, as he gazed, 
longing seized the boy’s heart and 
wrung it bitterly. 

The flame which blazed in his bright 
eyes put an answering glow in her 
own. She was aware that her beauty 
had startled him. For the first time in 
her life she was awake to her own love- 
liness, a sense wonderful and sweet. A 
delicate, throbbing fire came fluttering 
45 


MADAME MARGOT 


up through her breast ; a flush stole into 
her cheeks and warmed their ashy 
pallor. Her eyes met his: in his eyes 
were joy, surprise, and longing. His 
eyes met hers : and all her doubts went 
out in wordless joy. For, when she 
perceived that look in his face, she, too, 
was thrilled with longing; the silence 
sang; Are thrilled her heart; suddenly 
neck and cheeks flamed red. 

She answered his look with glorious 
eyes, humid, terrifled, alight. Then her 
frightened eyes fell and her shy face. 
But, like a wave which breaks along a 
beach in a passionate surge, her heart 
rushed out to greet him. 

He saw her neck and her cheeks flame 
red; passion struck him to the heart. 
With a gesture of haughty but boyish 
humility he pushed through the hedge, 
seized the sheltering pomegranate 
46 


MADAME MARGOT 


branches, and swept them aside. She 
stood uncurtained before him. He 
gazed at her. “St. Jacques!” he cried. 
“Are you a living creature?” 

She regarded him for an instant with 
a look of undisguised terror, catching 
her breath with a sobbing sound right 
pitiful to hear; then her quivering, 
piteous face was made exquisite by 
tears. 

A back-wash of timidity held him si- 
lently staring at her, — a boy, hot and 
hasty, sure of himself, impulsively 
bold, but abashed, — admiration and 
longing ablaze in his eyes. Gabri- 
elle stammered, but could not find 
words ; her breast heaved and sank ; she 
could not control it. Overwhelmed by 
the sudden strange rush of emotion, she 
swayed giddily, dizzily put out one hand 
to steady herself, and laid it upon his 
47 


MADAME MARGOT 


arm: a tremulous smile came over her 
face; her tears, like an April shower, 
were gone. 

His hand sought her other hand; 
found it ; held it ; thus their hands met. 
Half a step timidly they approached 
each other; than stood at a halt as if 
turned to stone. Her frightened breath 
was the only sound save the stirring of 
the night-wind in the dark boughs over- 
head. 

Shaking like a wind-blown leaf, 
desirez~vous de she gasped. 

His voice, too, was trembling. ‘‘That 
you should love me a little, for pity’s 
sake, . . . and quite forget to fear!” 

His voice seemed to Gabrielle god- 
like. 

“See, then ... I fear nothing . . . 
I should as soon think of fearing the air 
we breathe!” she said, adoring her slen- 
48 


MADAME MARGOT 


der young demigod out of the hedge. 
Then suddenly she raised her hand and 
laid it caressingly on his cheek; her 
trembling fingers felt like flowers 
trailed across his face. 

He laughed. There was an infec- 
tious sweetness and merriment in his 
laughter. Then they laughed together, 
softly, — first love and joy are silent 
things. 

“You are the god of love,” she said, 
with infinite simplicity. “Else, how 
could you fly over the hedge?” 

Her flute-like voice was hke the music 
of a half-awakened song, and exquisite- 
ly moving ; her words trailed slowly like 
speech asleep. 

Again he laughed. “The god of 
love? Bien! Then what shall I have 
that is godlike?” 

“What you will,” she said. “You 
49 


MADAME MARGOT 


may ask.” For the innocent are trust- 
ful as doves, helpless as the least crea- 
tures, weak as the small birds among 
the little branches. 

He drew a quick breath. “Most of 
all things on earth I would have a kiss 
from your mouth. Shall I have it?” 

“Yes,” she said. “Take it!” and put 
up her lips. So their mouths met. A 
thousand tingling darts of fire pierced 
through her as his lips touched hers. 

Her heart was wrung by that fii’st 
kiss; for an instant it stood still; the 
blood had left it, and had fled through 
her like flame ; she almost swooned. For 
first passion is like the wind in the blos- 
soming locust-tree, too sweet to be 
easily breathed or borne; youth’s first 
caress is almost an agony. Gabrielle 
gasped; his lips had burned on hers 
like a celestial fire. Both shook as love’s 
50 


MADAME MARGOT 


consuming flame rushed through them. 

As he to her was first, so she to him; 
each gave the other life’s immaculate 
gift, the unmeasured, unmeasurable fire 
of love’s first embrace, that passionate 
anguish of delicate, uncalculated de- 
light, ardent and boundless. 

Their lips hurried to the meeting. 
How could they delay? Youth and 
love brook no delays. Yet, as she felt 
his lips upon her own, she regarded him 
with a writhen countenance of unquali- 
fied terror. Love comes to the maiden 
spirit with sudden tumult, and strikes 
it, not as a bhthe discovery, or an all- 
Elysian joy, but as a birth and an 
agony, from which, if the soul survives, 
comes unspeakable happiness. His lips 
sought hers and seeking, met; in the 
meeting her soul flew out at her mouth. 

The world seemed suddenly remote, 
51 


MADAME MARGOT 


withdrawn into the depths of uncalcu- 
lated space. There remained but these 
two young, love-stunned souls, groping 
to each other in the garden under the 
shadow of the great magnolia-trees. 

The enchantment of love was upon 
them. The happy girl lay close upon 
his heart, and all she said was, “Love 
me ! Love me !” and, “If ever I cease to 
love you perdition take my soul!” he 
said. With utter confidence her eyes 
looked up into his, glowing with a pas- 
sion that knows no change; and all she 
said, as she lay against his heart, was, 
“Love me I Only love me !” That is all 
a woman asks. Her fingers stroked his 
yellow hair ; the mere touch thrilled her 
with unspeakable happiness. 

Night came, and darkness voyaged 
the uncharted sky. Overhead the blue 
dome blazed with the innumerable stars 
52 


MADAME MARGOT 


and golden planets heaving up heaven’s 
arch ; the tremulous green lamps of the 
fireflies filled the earth with twinkling 
constellations all around them. But the 
heavens and the earth were as nothing 
to them : love was there, and he, and she, 
and the utterly forgotten starlight. 
And where youth and love are, life, 
death, good or ill, the bright stars or 
the black mould, or better or worse, are 
nothing, and wisdom is of little worth. 

They gazed into each other’s eyes 
with wordless tenderness. Youth has 
not words, nor waits to find them; age 
finds words, and nothing else. 

Across the city boomed the hour, — 
at last. 

“Oh! I must go!” 

“N ot yet ! N ot yet !” 

“But I must go. Good-night!” 

“Not yet!” 


53 


MADAME MARGOT 


“But I must go! Good-night! Good- 
night! I pray you, leave me go . . . 
for truly I must go!” 

“You ’ll come again?” 

“To-morrow.” 

“Show me the way into the garden,” 
he said. She showed him the quickest 
way in, kissed him, and was gone 
through the garden; for him the night 
was darkened, and the stars put out. 
Her breath was still upon his face, the 
smell of the flowers in his nostrils ; and 
in his ears was the sound of her voice, 
calling after him, low and sweet, like a 
half-awakened song, — or was it but a 
bird which called, that softly-fluting, 
lonely note. 

And when he was gone the garden to 
Gabrielle was emptied of delight; but 
all her soul was singing. 

Her lips stung; her cheeks were on 
54 


MADAME MARGOT 


fire. Into the house she came, one little 
slipper upon its little foot, one slipper 
gone, — ^what became of that lost little 
slipper God knows! — and her stock- 
inged foot was damp with the dew which 
had dripped from the leaves overhead. 
A fiame was in her eyes which is in a 
maiden’s eyes but once, when love first 
lays his hands upon her heart. So 
transfigured was she, she seemed a 
winged creature. She loved; she was 
beloved; inarticulate ecstasy! Hands, 
feet, neck, and face told but one story. 
Her eyes shone like blazing stars; the 
roses had returned to her pale lips, the 
freshness to her wan cheeks. 

Margot watched her with narrowed 
eyes. 

“Mother, I am happy; so happy that 
I do not want to die ; I want to live for- 
ever!” 


55 


MADAME MARGOT 


Margot eyed her narrowly. “What 
has changed your mind?” 

“I was walking in the garden,” re- 
joined Gabrielle, “and the god of love 
was there. He kissed me on my mouth. 
Mother; and oh, Mother, love is sweet!” 

Margot’s heart stopped beating. 
“Are you quite mad?” she said. 

Then the truth dawned upon her. 
She lost all sense of balance in the 
crossed tides of dismay. She strained 
her daughter to her heart, then thrust 
her away; dropped speech unuttered; 
gave a choked cry of despair, while her 
face went gray as ashes. 

She clutched Gabrielle by the arms, 
steadying herself, for she could scarcely 
have stood alone. She blinked like a 
person purblind, and peered into the 
girl’s wondering eyes. The lines of her 
face became furrows. “Oh, my God!” 

56 


MADAME MARGOT 


she whispered, “I should have known! 
I should have known!” 

Margot cowered as if to avoid a blow; 
her eyes dilated; yet she seemed in- 
capable of seeing; her mouth fell open, 
she seemed to scream, yet made no sound 
but that of the whistling breath through 
her nostrils, as one who sustains the tor- 
ture of the rack. 

She thrust Gabrielle from her. “Go !” 
she gasped, and struck herself on head 
and breast, crying out, “Mother of 
God! I should have known! Fool, 
fool, fool!” Then, as if stunned, her 
head fell down upon her breast. 


In the dark and breathless stillness 
of the night there was a stern, strange 
loveliness; and now something akin to 
terror, the terror of a child that dreams, 
57 


MADAME MARGOT 


and, waking in the darkness, cries out 
from dread of unknown things. 

An ill wind, which had been blowing 
since sunset with a far-off, moaning 
sound, had arisen to a melancholy, 
screaming note, with an extraordinary 
rumbling in the chimney. Clouds of 
soot and ashes, blown from the fireplace, 
whirled in drifts around the floor. The 
sound of distant thunder, the velocity 
of the wind, the increasing turmoil and 
confusion, filled the night with keen 
disease. A bird sped round the house 
with a shrill cry; the wind bellowed 
hoarsely in the chimney; the house 
shook with the blast; over the housetops 
could be heard the coming of the rain ; 
the light of the flickering candles served 
only to increase the gloom; the draft 
from the window swelled out the print 
curtain and floated it half-way across 
58 


MADAME MARGOT 


the room, straining and whipping at its 
pole; the black magnolias bent, and 
rose, and bent again, as if beneath the 
beating of gigantic wings: it was close 
upon midnight. 

Before her crucifix Margot knelt, re- 
gardless of the storm, praying in 
anguish for the safety of her child. 
Ever before her imagining was Gabri- 
elle, dishonored and betrayed, aban- 
doned to scorn and poverty. Her hands 
twisted in desperate appeal. 

‘‘Blessed St. Dominique, lover of 
souls, preserve my daughter!” she 
plead. She listened motionless ; all that 
she heard was the roar of the wind. 

“Mary, Mother, gi’eat in grace, de- 
fend and preserve my child! Mary, 
Mother of Sorrows, have mercy upon 
my daughter!” 


59 


MADAME MARGOT 


Again she listened; but for the howl 
of the gale the silence was profound. 

“All ye Holy Virgins, intercede for 
us!” Her panting voice broke. “Lord 
of Compassion, hear me! Lord of In- 
finite Mercy, hear me! Have mercy 
upon my child! O Thou, Most Pitiful 
Lord of the Innocent, answer my 
prayer!” 

Again she listened. There was no 
sound but the roar of the storm, the 
creak of the house, and the gnawing of 
the great rats in the timbers of the wall. 
She cringed and shivered, and in ex- 
treme entreaty cried, “Lord, Seigneur 
Dieu, preserve and spare my child! 
You see her young and fair, her soul as 
pure as the fiowers that bloom in Para- 
dise! You breathed into her life; by 
your law she was made; but for you she 
60 


MADAME MARGOT 

never had been; dare you then let her 
fall?” 

But all was still. Heaven, to mortal 
anguish, seems intolerably serene, so far 
beyond comprehension is the inscrutable 
leisure of God. It was taking too long 
for her sorrow to reach the foot of the 
throne. She was seeking her daugh- 
ter’s safety, though it should be at the 
hazard of her soul; but all she had was 
the bitterness of unanswered supplica- 
tion. To hearts dismayed there is noth- 
ing so appalhngly still as God. The 
confident faithful may await the ulti- 
mate reply; but the desperate storm 
heaven, they have not time to wait. 

She beat her breast; her hair was 
moist; her garments disarrayed; her 
voice grew sharp ; by vicars, saints and 
intercessors, by all intermediaries, she 
plead with Almighty God to listen and 
61 


MADAME MARGOT 


to reply. There was no answer. “Mary, 
Mother of Sorrows !” she gasped. 
“Does God not understand?” 

Her appeal arose piercing shrill: 
^'DieUy Dieu, Eternel Dieu, ecoute 
mes cris! Hdte-toi de ma secourir! 
Hdte-toi d'elle delivrer! O Toi, qui 
ecoutes la priere, aie pitie de nous! Ne 
tarde-pas! J&coute^ mes crisr She 
waited; there was no answer; and sud- 
denly her voice went up like the cry of 
delirium: 

"O Dieu Tresdiaut, reveille~toi! 
Reveille-toi, mon Dieur Then in a 
tone of amazement and pathos, “Mary, 
Mother of Sorrows,” she said, “do I 
have to explain to God?” 

She paused a moment while despair 
rose like a swelling flood ; then through 
the darkness and the night went up a 
bitter cry: ^'Seigneur Dieu! Tout- 
62 


MADAME MARGOT 


puissant Dieu! sois attentif a ma priere: 
tu mfarrosarez avec Vkysope^, et je 
serai purifiee; vous me lav eras ^ et je 
deviendrai plus blanche que la neigel 
Plus blanche que la neige, mon Dieu! 
Plus blanche que la neige! Gabrielle, 
ma fille^ mon Dieu! plus blanche que la 
neige! Forgive in her my transgres- 
sions; pardon in her my sins; deliver 
her from her inheritance . . . O my 
God! . . . let her be white!” 

A tremendous gust blew through the 
house; the wind sucked in the chimney 
with a sound like awful laughter; the 
bhnds recoiled with thunderous shock; 
but from Heaven there was no answer. 

At this she cried out pitifully as He 
who long ago cried out the cry, which 
through unending ages shall stand 
archetype of despair; ^'Mon Dieu, mon 
Dieu! pourquoi m"as-tu abandorme?'' 

63 


3IADAME MARGOT 


The wind screamed round about her 
with the sound of many voices ; far off 
arose a tumult as of many people run- 
ning; borne on the wind came a torrent 
of hideous sound, not mad music, 
but awful dissonance, swiftly nearing, 
suddenly checked: after the clamor a 
silence like death; the room was fantas- 
tically still. Margot clung to the foot 
of the crucifix. ^'Pourquoi^ O DieUj 
rejettes-tu?"^ she asked in a voice grown 
shriveled and thin. She crouched a 
moment, motionless, her head on one 
side, listening. There was no reply. 
Heaven maintained its brassy silence. 
Her face went gray; her eyes were hard 
as stones; she turned her back on the 
crucifix, saying, ‘T will call upon You 
no more!” 

There was a queer shuffling sound as 
of footsteps in the entry. The candles 
64 


MADAME MARGOT 

sank to dull blue sparks devoid of radi- 
ance ; yet, instead of darkness there was 
light. Outside was darkness, vast, pit- 
mirk; inside, appalling light. All the 
place was stunned and blinded by an 
overwhelming light which cast no 
shadows anywhere, hut, vehemently 
streaming, searched crack and cranny; 
not a crevice escaped. It lapped and 
flowed like waves, and penetrated 
everything; even the gross material of 
the walls, saturated by that flame, gave 
back a superfluous glow, a white excess 
of light, and every pointed thing with- 
in the room was peaked and capped 
with flame. Round and round the room 
a bewildered host of moths in little 
wavering flights and drops went flutter- 
ing, with a light rustle of powdery 
wings, and, among them, bats splashed 
through the light with a low, continu- 
65 


MADAME MARGOT 


ous whirr. Round and round, like 
froth-clots on flood-water swinging 
around a vortex, whirled slantbat and 
moth in a dizzy, irregular ring, in the 
midst of which, crouched in a high- 
backed chair, sat a shriveled, dead- 
alive, mummy-hke flgure, as thin and 
fleshless as a skeleton, — an apparition, 
sinister, white, and wasted as a corpse 
new-risen from the grave. 

Its chin upon its folded hands, its 
hands about one knee, the knee upheld 
by the heel crooked at the chair-seat’s 
edge, the other gaunt leg dangling 
across the upraised foot, the specter 
smiled on Margot a bleak, Saturnine 
smile. Its face was greatly wasted ; all 
the life of it seemed gathered into the 
brilliant, terrible eyes, which blazed 
with infernal light, in splendid scorn, 
without remorse, sardonical; a coun- 
66 


MADAME MARGOT 


tenance such as God alone endures to 
look upon unmoved; a figure terrible 
. . . Deity, deformed, might look like 
this, grotesquely majestical, hideous, 
baleful, glorious, accursed, malign; an 
archangel, fallen, outcast, depraved: 
Satan, god of the discontent. 

A twisted smile wreathing his evil 
lips, with his chin hooked over his hands, 
— a smile of cool confidence mingled 
with nonchalance, “Why not try me?’’ 
he said. 


Staring into the abyss of blinding 
terror and light which encircled that 
thunder-scarred visage, with its thin, 
sleepless eyelids and twisted, ironic 
smile, Margot shrank against the wall, 
shivering as with cold ; one hand shield- 
67 


MADAME MARGOT 


ing her blinded eyes, one groping along 
the wall, she listened, breathlessly. 

In a voice whose deep and hollow 
sound seemed part of the midnight 
storm, Satan spoke. 

“God has forgotten you; that is 
plain,” he said. “Then why not pray 
unto me? I remember when God for- 
gets. 

“What did ye hope? That He who 
left Jesus to die on the cross, would 
stoop to succor you? Nay, then; you 
have been cajoled. He has never so 
much as kept one man from the wither- 
ing breath of time, but leaves a thou- 
sand ills on earth to work their wills 
upon him. Yet you thought He would 
harken to you? Fi done! Neither for 
hfe nor death, nor angels, nor princi- 
palities, nor for all the powers that ever 
68 


MADAME MARGOT 


were, or shall forever be, will He alter 
for you, or for any, one iota of His law. 

“Nay, though your heart break with 
its burden, not a jot of His law shall 
be altered to ease your load. 

“I have seen all the piety under the 
sun; and its wages are vanity. What 
profit have you of all your labor; what 
recompense of your toil? Heaven 
hath sent you sorrow; it hath not sent 
a cure, nor had compassion upon you. 

“If this be loving-kindness, why not 
try damnation awhile; not forfeit 
riches, power, and place, for a fool’s 
hope of treasures in heaven? 

“Doubtless the priest hath said unto 
you, ‘What shall it profit a man if he 
gain the whole world, and lose his own 
soul?’ Faw! I say unto you, ‘What 
profit hath a man, though he save his 
own soul, if he lose his heart’s desire? 

69 


MADAME MARGOT 


“When you are dead and done for, 
and lie sleeping in the dust ; when 
worms destroy your body, when your 
days upon earth are become as shad- 
ows, and you have no more a portion 
forever in anything under the sun, 
what shall it profit you to have saved 
your soul at the cost of your heart’s 
desire? Nay; ye have been cajoled! 
Your way is without hope. 

“But come unto me, ye anxious, 
whose hearts are bowed with care, and 
I will give you your hearts’ desire! No 
man calls on me in vain; I turn none 
empty away; the world is full of my 
mercies upon those who trust in me; 
and my benefits fall like the summer 
rain on all who covenant with me. 
Ask, and ye shall receive, whatsoever 
your hearts may wish; yea, though it 
lie at the ends of the earth it shall be 
70 


MADAME MARGOT 


given unto you; your house shall be 
full of good things, riches, and place, 
and power; ye shall heap up gold like 
dust from the streets; ye shall have 
your hearts’ desire! 

“Come unto me, ye weary, whose 
hearts are bent with trouble ; lay down 
your burden, and follow me ; I will give 
you your heart’s desire!” 

Margot’s hand went up the wall a 
little way toward the crucifix, then 
slipped back with fumbling fingers. 

“Lord . . . Lord!” she whispered 
hoarsely, “give me my heart’s desire!” 

“And what is your heart’s desire?” 

“That my daughter, Gabrielle, should 
be white to all eternity! All that I 
have, and all that I am, will I give, . . . 
yea, for this would I give my soul.” 

Satan smiled. 

“Then lay down your burden, my 

71 


MADAME MARGOT 

daughter; you shall have your heart’s 
desire!” 

Margot, with a sobbing cry, laid 
down her life’s unbearable burden at the 
feet of the Prince of the Powers of 
Darkness. 

By his eternal damnation he swore 
she should have her heart’s desire; by 
her rejected salvation she swore to abide 
by the covenant. 

^'Conmfimatum e^tr he said, and 
was gone on the black blast. 

The candles sent up a thin flare of 
flame and smoke, and went out in 
utter darkness. Crouched on the floor 
against the wall Margot still knelt in 
a stupor. A rat came out of a hole in 
the wall and gnawed at her rosary. 
Dawn came in at the windows; the 
twiht gray grew pink. The walls were 
blotched and spotted; everything ex- 
72 


MADAME MARGOT 

haled an odor of mildew; Margot still 
huddled upon the floor beneath the 
cruciflx ; over her head the crucified 
Christ hung mute in His agony. 


The flight of hours, the decline of 
day, the season’s turn, all things which 
preface change are presages of parting, 
and, like the proximity of the tomb, 
though wreathed in bloomy myrtle, are 
subtly fraught with sadness and regret. 
All love’s farewells are so oppressed. 
Though with absolute confidence in 
themselves and in each other, sure of 
the imperishable structure of their love, 
a nameless apprehension fills the hearts 
of all who part, and casts a melancholy 
shade on partings. “Until to-morrow !” 
Ah, to-morrow! “To-morrow I will 
come again!” she says. They go, with 
73 


MADAME MARGOT 


trembling hands, each, shaken by de- 
parture, saying, ‘‘Shall we meet again?” 

“To-morrow!” Gabrielle had said, as 
she took her lips away. “To-morrow I 
will come again!” and was gone. 

In the warm heart of the midsum- 
mer night he dreamed again among the 
hedges, a boy’s dream, a dream of joy, 
a dream of heart’s delight. Her lips 
were pomegranate blossoms ; her cheeks 
were wild peach flowers; it was a boy’s 
dream, a dream of joy, a dream of 
heart’s delight! Her waist was as a 
willow-withe, her voice a bird in the 
deep wood calling; her feet danced fan- 
tasies in his heart. He came all in the 
daze of a boy’s dream, a dream of joy, 
a dream of heart’s desire. With every 
eager breath he drew in the hyacinthine 
fragrance of the night. 

All day long, like a sullen army, a 

74 


MADAME MARGOT 

great cloud heaved and gloomed along 
the west, with wind-blown vapors 
streaming around its thunderous 
heights. All day long, in awe of it, men 
put oiF going here and there, gave over 
plans, and stood oppressed by its tre- 
mendous imminence. The day was 
darkened by the dominion of the cloud. 
At evening it rolled off across the plain, 
obhterating leagues of lesser storms, 
with fire stabbing at its breast, and dis- 
tant bellowings of tremendous sound. 
Heaving slowly against the twilight 
stars, rolling in sullen majesty upon the 
gale, pale moonlight falling on its 
peaks, and the gray rain trailing down 
below, in its heart innumerable light- 
nings, thunder grumbling in its front, it 
left the drenched field to the moon. 
Beyond the edge of the world it hung, 
75 


MADAME MARGOT 


gloomily brooding upon the splendor of 
the night. 

In the magic of the moonhght Lilac 
lane lay ghostly as a dream, hushed, 
alluring, unfamiliar. The strange, 
white light of the immense full moon 
lay dead on everything; the hedge-rows 
were hung with the shadows and dark- 
ness of strange delight; the cicada chit- 
tered in the almond tree; the great 
moths flapped heavily among the wet 
moon-flowers; a slow, scarcely per- 
ceptible wind blew, languid-sweet, 
hardly moving the heavy leaves of the 
magnolias; a gray bird pitched a wild 
song somewhere deep within a hedge. 

In Margot’s garden everything was 
wrapped in night’s singular fantasy. In 
the pallor of the moonlight the garden 
lay like an enchanted realm of goblin 
loveliness. The lilies stood as pale and 
76 


MADAME MARGOT 

chill as flowers carved of marble ; among 
the drowsy poppies hung garlands of 
nocturnal vine whose folded blooms in 
chaplets clustered colorless in the pallid 
moonshine. The whole place trembled 
in a pale, strange beauty which the 
silence made lovelier still. Like an 
island in a silvery mist Margot’s house 
stood blind asleep, its little windows 
curtained deep with shadows, dim, blue, 
and dark, and on the woodwork of the 
door, like petals of dismantled flowers, 
wax-wet, wind-blown, walked moths 
thrown there by the whining wind, 
slowly blowing across leagues of lonely 
marsh ; and, among the moths, the glow- 
worms, faintly lighted and phosphor- 
green, crawled up and down, up and 
down, to nowhere: it looked like the 
door of the way to oblivion, so lonely 
it seemed and so still. The garden was 

77 


MADAME MARGOT 

utterly empty; the house yard was de- 
serted. 

He looked; he listened; and his heart 
stood still ; save for the glow-worm and 
the moth there was nothing alive there 
but him. Like the chill which creeps 
across the matted grass of evening in 
the last fair days of autumn, full of the 
faded fragrance and haunted dusk of 
fall, a wordless dread stole over him. 
The moonlight gleamed on the cottage 
wall with a singular, mournful splen- 
dor; a heavy wind began to stir the 
trees; immensely mournful, faint and 
far-away, there came a boom of thun- 
der from beyond the rim of the world ; 
joy all at once was gone from the mid- 
summer night; the haunting strange- 
ness crept into his heart. The place was 
full of the heavy fragrance of dead 
flowers. Here and there a palsied rose, 
78 


MADAME MARGOT 


its faded leaves relaxed, broke, and fell 
without a sound. 

Under the fig-trees he paused a mo- 
ment, undecided, — ^to listen, shivering a 
little, and peering along the wall. 
There was no sound of human life. 
Though the wind had set the great 
leaves stirring, all was ghostly as a 
dream. One white star above the roof- 
peak sailed among the broken clouds; 
the moon, desolate, splendid, hung in 
the magnolia, mournfully gleaming 
through the black boughs; in the still 
air the moonlight stood; the shadows 
lay like solid things upon the cottage 
wall. 

At the corner of the house he paused 
and listened again. In the strange, un- 
answering silence a sense of disaster 
gripped him. There was no sound any- 
where; his heart almost ceased beating. 
79 


MADAME MARGOT 


With premonition of catastrophe he 
ran along the wall: — ^nothing, but win- 
dows, battened or curtained, blank as a 
blindman’s eyes; not a sign of humanity. 

Where he had dreamed to stand 
speechless with happiness, he stood 
shaken by nameless fear. 

Deep within the house he heard a re- 
laxed beam “pung” with a sound like a 
viol string softly struck by a hand in 
passing: the deep, slow sound rever- 
berated through the hollow house, and 
died away in vacant whispering. 

Through the crevice of the shutter he 
saw the cold moonlight fall along the 
deserted floor. The house was abso- 
lutely empty. 


There is a convent-school for or- 
phaned girls kept by the nuns in New 
80 


MADAME MARGOT 


Orleans. The loveliest girl seen there 
in years was Gabrielle Lagoux, carried 
there between two nights, lest young 
love, like death, insist. 

Dawn and departure. She had trem- 
bled like a leaf, half comprehending 
only; her mother kissed her twice, in 
feverish haste, with lips like dry leaves : 
that was their parting. Some one called 
“Gabrielle!’’ at the door. The coach 
was at the gate. She stopped at the 
wicket, looked down the lane, said a few 
words to the coachboy who guarded her 
gown from the wheels: “Tell him,” she 
said, “that I love him. Tell him re- 
member me.” She paused again at the 
door of the coach, her foot on the step, 
a dazed look in her eyes, saying, “Tell 
him not to forget me. I love him!” 
The wheels rumbled over the cobbles. 
She never came back. When she en- 
81 


MADAME MARGOT 


tered the coach young love was done for 
forever: she never saw her golden lad 
again. Love beat his rose-red wings in 
vain; he could not overtake the coach; 
for the coach was fate ; all was over ; his 
dusty feet halted in the heat of the dusty 
road; “Good-by! . . . Good-by, for- 
ever!” 

Days became weeks, weeks months, 
months grew into years ; she never came 
again. She passed through the con- 
vent’s sheltering door, was safe from 
mischance and folly; passed into a 
world remote of unfamiliar faces, and 
forgot. 

God made memory cruel, that men 
might know remorse; but the Devil de- 
vised forgetfulness, anodyne of regret. 

Reputed heiress to vast estates, pro- 
vided with boundless means and gifted 
with great beauty, coming to marriage- 
82 


MADAME MARGOT 


able age in all the freshness of her 
youthful loveliness, she was wedded to 
a wealthy planter’s only son whose love 
for her was very great. 

Pure happiness was theirs prolonged 
far beyond the honeymoon. Sur- 
rounded by every creature comfort 
wealth could procure or affection de- 
vise, secure in a faithful man’s unalter- 
ing love, she dwelt serene, in a country 
where the fruits of the earth and the 
flowers of the forest spread natural 
loveliness about fields of unsurpassed 
fertility. 

She never knew winter, want, nor 
war; her years were filled with peace; 
her estates increased to vast propor- 
tions ; a thousand slaves were happy, be- 
ing hers. Admired for her beauty, 
greatly loved, she returned an adoring 
husband’s devotion, and bore him child- 
83 


MADAME MARGOT 


dren with eyes like the morning and hair 
like wreathed flames. Her daughters 
married and were fruitful, bearing chil- 
dren fair as an April day, with eyes like 
the sky of the morning. For them, for 
her, the world rolled on in unperturbed 
peace. 

But she never saw her golden lad 
again. 


Something inscrutable, deeper than 
whim, had come over Margot Lagoux. 
Her work was oddly altered: it had 
more air, less ease; more spell, less 
charm; more force, and less dexterity. 
The stuff’s she chose no longer were 
notable for the exquisite, wan delicacy 
which so becomes the pallor of high- 
bred beauty; she took an incomprehen- 
sible joy in vivid color; but what was 
84 


MADAME MARGOT 


gained in vividness was lost in harmony. 
Her work retained distinction, but of a 
queer sort; reserve gave way to novelty; 
simple beauty was replaced by mere- 
tricious charm; her taste, which had 
been perfect, seemed suffering gradual 
corruption; her craft was marred by 
crudities. Her turbans began to look 
as if there were only barbaric plumes in 
the world, of parrakeets and cockatoos, 
trogons and flamingos, gay toucan 
wings, and extraordinary quills; florid 
colors and distempered stains were 
mingled in inharmonious contrast; 
mango-yellow, peacock-green, Egyp- 
tian blue, and Congo scarlet, flaunted 
their discordant tones together. 

Style she had ; but it was style malade 
du rouvieux; her trade-mark had be- 
come gaucherie, her art artifice; good 
taste had departed. Her work no more 
85 


MADAME MARGOT 

was garnished, but bedizened with ex- 
cess, nowhere restrained, but having 
unrestricted vent in tawdry fripperies. 
Her handicraft was stamped by power 
and energy misapplied ; the sole distinc- 
tion it had left was whimsical device. 
Everything she did was like sweet wine 
soured, the worse for having been so 
much better. Her bonnets were like 
songs in forced falsetto, every line 
slurred by subtle default, every sweet 
note out ; always too much or too little, 
never the happy mean. Even the pearls 
or marguerites, which she had formerly 
employed in bordures as trade-marks 
of her craft, had become cheap beads of 
colored pottery and glass. In tarnished 
bowls, in corners of obscure pawnshop 
windows, among the dead flies and the 
dust, are still occasionally to be found 
beads, often called “margots” or “mar- 
86 


MADAME MARGOT 


gotons/’ like those employed by Margot 
Lagoux in her practice of millinery, but 
said to be thread-plummets employed 
by makers of lace. One, a Greek dealer 
in old gold and stolen silver, tells the 
enquiring traveler that these are Dead 
Sea pebbles, worn to their peculiar 
shapes by the ceaseless fret of that 
gloomy sea. But beads like them, gro- 
tesques, baroques, were laced on toques 
and turbans of her make, and now and 
then were found among the laces on 
bonnets which had no need of them: 
men, seeing them, narrowed their 
glances, and took new note of the 
wearer. Those aware permitted none 
near or dear to adorn her person with 
them. 

A queerly degenerated taste marked 
everything that Margot did. With 
singular obliquity she set everything 

87 


MADAME MARGOT 


awry; from rich goods produced un- 
speakably poor results; and with cheap 
cunning vexed priceless stuffs beyond 
recovery or repair. 

Her custom fell from vendre cher to 
bon marche. With the diminishing 
stream of patronage the material in her 
shop went down from velours raSj 
velours fagonne, and velours de sole, to 
velours de coton and coton croise, 
from velvet to velveteens. The air of 
distinction which attracted gentility 
utterly faded away; the coarse, crude 
stuffs and rude handiwork repelled the 
aristocratic. Calls for her work became 
infrequent; more infrequent; came no 
more. One morning the milliner’s 
shop was shut. It never was opened 
again. The stuffs on the dusty shelves 
grew faded, discolored, and stained; 
cobwebs hung from the mouldy walls; 

88 


MADAME MARGOT 


the trade which had known and fre- 
quented the place knew it no more. 


But out of this end, like a paradox, 
above the apparent wreck Margot arose 
in prosperity: the Devil was good as 
his word. 

She dwelt in a massive great house, a 
mansion, handsome, stately, and som- 
ber, by a courtyard paved in marble, 
approached through a vaulted tunnel lit 
by a dull-flaming torch and closed by 
an iron gate. From the side of the court 
a staircase of marble rose to her private 
door, ornate as a public office’s entry 
and massively carved in flowers; stairs 
within, of blue-veined marble, went 
up through wide corridors heavily 
panelled in dark Spanish wood. Be- 
neath the house vast cellars boomed and 
89 


MADAME MARGOT 

echoed; the chimneys rose like turrets 
grouped against the darkling sky. The 
house throughout was furnished with 
every luxury befitting persons of cir- 
cumstance: broad hearths for the burn- 
ing of long wood in winter, vaulted cor- 
ridors, burnished fittings of latten, and 
jalousies of saffron-wood with retaining 
rosettes of porcelain; mahogany tables 
of rare design, deep-carved, and 
adorned with brass. Curtains of saf- 
fron-colored silk cinctured with gold 
braid hung from the ceiling to the floor 
in heavy golden folds. Day was made 
night, night day by many subterfuges, 
with blinds and saffron jalousies ironed 
fast against the noon. By night the 
light shone out to the red stars, and the 
house was full of the swift, rich sweep- 
ing of heavy silk curtains waved by the 
wind, and the glow of the wax candles 
90 


MADAME MARGOT 

chequered the courtyard below with 
gold. In the middle of the courtyard, 
at the foot of the staircase, a fountain 
played in a yellow basin, with a pleas- 
ant, incessant noise of whispering green 
water, falling perpetually with a deli- 
cate patter over seven brown stone dol- 
phins, spouting from whose pouted 
mouths went up contending streams; 
the waters gushed, white-laced, bab- 
bling, from the green-coppered vents in 
the dolphins’ mouths, and descended in 
spray to the bowl below ; and under the 
bowl the drain-pipe murmured subter- 
ranean cool. About the courtyard 
stood a row of crimson-flowered pome- 
granate-trees: through the split brown 
rinds the garnet pulp and silver seeds 
showed, clotted thick as crystals in a 
stone; and purple fruits in heavy clus- 
ters, of myriad, uncounted drupes, hung 
91 


MADAME MARGOT 


from the superior privets ranged along 
the courtyard wall^ dropping green 
shadows, like vast laces, over the blind- 
arched bricks below. A garden lay be- 
yond the court, its gate hung thick and 
deep with yellow roses, clinging to the 
iron lantern, drooping and swaying in 
unconstrained festoons. Beyond the 
garden the place debouched into a for- 
gotten graveyard. 

By night ahve, by day the place was 
sunk in dreams, with lavish beauty 
everywhere composed to sleep in sunlit 
sloth, luxurious and deep. The place 
seemed fallen in a trance. The pigeons 
dozed along the eaves ; and on the grass 
below, where the garden stretched, the 
peacock slowly danced his stiff and 
stately dance, an iris feather bubble, 
green as jade, purple as wine, blue as 
lazuli. The courtyard seemed the very 
92 


MADAME MARGOT 


home of sleep. The sun lay stupid on 
the silent walls and drowsily beat on the 
blue-doored cellars shut with cautious 
bars, closed fast and locked beneath the 
arcaded porch; the shadows of the slim 
pillars slept in the graceful galleries. 
All was hushed but the peacock’s cry, 
while that iridescent bubble, on toes 
black as ebony, danced, here and there, 
there and here, his slow “pavone” 
among the yellow roses. 

By night beneath the windows an- 
cient tombs bared their sculptured 
breasts to the stars and stared up at 
the golden arches; and dank, black, 
cracked sarcophagi, chequered with 
light, laid broad their time-worn, sculp- 
tured emblems and tragical inscriptions, 
— skulls with wings, and urns, and 
hour-glasses whose un-refluent, palsied 
sands meet measure of eternity kept 
93 


MADAME MARGOT 

with motionless registry, and stony gar- 
lands of stone flowers which never 
bloomed, nor ever were sweet, as that 
beneath them had been sweet to man’s 
all quivering sense. Here lay the long 
dead, day and night, communicant in 
death; and wraiths of old unhappiness 
rose sighing with regret, or dreamed, 
beneath the stones, of love as futile as 
regret. The wind among the tomb- 
stones, like a stream from a windy foun- 
tain, murmured among the pomegran- 
ate-trees, stirred the shadows under the 
privets, rustled between the silken cur- 
tains, whispering, much as dead men 
do, chill, wordless, fluttering breaths of 
unsolved mystery. And when the wind 
from the graveyard whispered, all the 
place stood listening, hushed. The wind 
from the graveyard whispered among 
the saffron curtains; the ceaseless foun- 
94 


MADAME MARGOT 


tain waters fell ; else all was still but the 
peacock’s wild night-cry, sounding 
through the unfathomable silence like 
the rending of an illusion, — deep and 
singular and strange, — ^by a harsh 
trumpet’s blast. Heh! The Devil 
keeps his promises in the way that suits 
him best. 


Margot’s existence here was a thing 
apart from everything plebeian: she 
was immensely wealthy ; had riches such 
as are won by few, though sought by 
many, plantations in the country, 
houses in town, money on call in quan- 
tity that made great bankers bow; 
women to wait upon her, deferential 
men, boys to run at her beck, maid- 
servants, bond and free, to go before 
her; her cellar was famous for its wines, 
95 


MADAME MARGOT 


her dress for its wild and extravagant 
beauty; all that she touched she took; 
all that she took she kept; everything 
that she kept increased beyond the 
bounds of reason; she was spoken to 
with deference and referred to with 
finesse. She had her carriage, lined 
with silk, with yellow hammer-cloths 
and bands; in the license of her beauty 
she laughed at sumptuary laws, and in 
her illegal equipage rolled insolently 
on; in amber gown and canary turban 
fastened with a golden brooch, despite 
the law, she rode the streets like a 
charioted queen ; or, dressed in wild, un- 
studied colors such as are used in 
Barbary, she wandered in her garden in 
the after-hours of the day, making 
wreaths of the saffron roses, a cockatoo 
upon her arm the color of a wild peach 
flower. 


96 


MADAME MARGOT 


A shapely, splendid creature, with 
her handsome, heavy hands, neck like a 
tower, glorious hair hanging rich be- 
neath its turban, her embroidered robe 
but carelessly worn and recklessly ad- 
justed^ — oddly, the coarser the more 
becoming, — a goddess made of beauti- 
ful earth, but coarse as the cotton- 
flower, with confident face and insolent 
mien she took her way through the 
streets with a supple stride which was 
the despair of envious rivalry; hers was 
a regal beauty like the tiger’s loveli- 
ness. 

With her face like beauty seen in 
dreams, incredible and untrue, she went 
through the community like a lovely 
malady: even wise men’s souls were 
troubled ; sturdy hearts that had 
laughed at passion shook with the fair-^ 
ness of her face; piety was troubled by 

97 


MADAME MARGOT 


her golden loveliness. More than one 
sermon from Solomon’s Song was in- 
spired by Rita Lagoux ; she was known 
as the woman with a face like a beauti- 
ful blasphemy. 

Time but increased the wildness and 
singularity of her beauty: it was gos- 
siped about in the market-stalls ; it was 
babbled about in the streets. 

Then a torpor fell on her loveliness, 
a dull and leaden look ; her beauty grew 
sullen and lowering as the flame of a 
fallen fire. Though not much altered 
in appearance she was somehow greatly 
changed. Her looks had lost some- 
thing, no one could say what, gained 
something none could define. It was 
not that she was less the unforgettable 
being she had been, or that her sullen 
beauty made less mark on memory, but 
that the ecstasy of beauty was replaced 
98 


MADAME MARGOT 


by a queer unrest. Though as never 
before she was possessed of a singular 
comeliness, men began to regard her 
with an odd uneasiness: there was a 
foreignness in her face, and the look of 
alien things. 

She looked like a portrait of herself 
painted in irony. 

On the day that her daughter was 
married in far-away New Orleans, 
Margot stood motionless by her mirror, 
staring at her own reflection. The day 
seemed oddly overcast. Suddenly she 
burst into wild, shrill laughter, cheer- 
less and tragic, her body shaking, her 
hands wrung together, turned away 
with an epithet, reversed the glass, and 
never looked into a mirror again. 
Something had passed across her face 
hke a strange, ambiguous stain. 

A shadow had fallen upon her like 
99 


MADAME MARGOT 


an unexpected dusk, or the dimness un- 
der a passing cloud, and had overcast 
her beauty. 

Not time with his pinching seam, nor 
age with its ugliness, but a subtle and 
more pecuhar change had come over 
Margot Lagoux. 

There is a half-light in the hour of 
an eclipse which casts a weird spell on 
the world, when the sun is but a narrow 
crescent at high noon and the earth 
grows oddly dim in an untimely dusk. 
Such a dusk was fallen upon Margot 
Lagoux. 

Sultry beauty such as hers has ever 
an early afternoon; but this v/as more 
than sultry beauty’s early afternoon. 
Not day, not darkness yet, but dusk 
went with her everywhere like twilight 
in the woods. The sun shone brightly 
everywhere along a sparkling world, 
100 


MADAME MARGOT 


but on Margot lay a shadow, strange 
and sinister. As unbleached muslin 
sallows to dingy isabella, as metal tar- 
nishes from neglect, as white paper 
dulls in the sun, as the spot on bruised 
fruit turns brown, Margot Lagoux was 
changing; she was becoming tawny, 
swart, bisblanc as the Creoles say. Her 
golden-ruddy cheeks had turned a mor- 
bid olive-brown as if a somber fountain 
were playing in her blood. 

There were many women at that day 
on whom fate laid dreadful hands: 
Louise Briaud, who was blinded by 
smallpox; Fanchette Bourie, whom 
God pitied with death; Helene Riche- 
mont, the leper; Floride Biez, Doucie 
Baramont, Francesca Villeponteaux, 
wrecked by disfiguring maladies, God 
give them peace 1 But on none was laid 
101 


MADAME MARGOT 


so ruthless, unrelenting, deliberate a 
hand as fell upon Rita Lagoux, 

She changed like a portrait whose 
shadows, painted in bitumen, have 
struck through and distempered the 
rest. Like a strange, nocturnal crea- 
ture she seemed to absorb the gloom. 
Her glorious eyes grew jaundiced; her 
rose-brown lips grew dun; the delicate 
webs that joined her fingers grew yel- 
low as bakers’ saffron. Malice laughed 
at her thickening lips. 

Weeks turned months, months years; 
swarthy she grew and ugly. She put 
aside beauty as a worn, bright garment, 
and took on grotesquery stark and 
medieval as a Chinese teak-wood carv- 
ing. She became both grotesque and 
contorted, gross, misshapen, sullied 
and debased. The old enchantment was 
gone like a necromancer’s spell. The 
102 


MADAME MARGOT 


perfect gait had faltered down to a 
lurching trot, a hurrying waddle with 
an irregular, unsure motion, hesitating 
a moment, then hastening on with vague 
uncertainty. Her soft, sleepy laugh 
had grown violent, her melodious voice 
coarse; of her fair face there was noth- 
ing left, no, not remembrance even. 

A young man came to her threshold 
one morning and looked in eagerly; he 
would speak with Margot Lagoux : but 
“Is that Margot Lagoux?” he asked, a 
curious look coming over his face, — ^that 
woman, obese, with low brows, huge fat 
eyelids, round bare forehead, short, 
strained and corded neck enormously 
thick, yellowed teeth irregularly shown 
between thick, sallowed lips, cheeks 
wrinkled, flecked and blotched with 
brown like spotted peaches. “No!” he 
said, hastily, shrinking away. “That is 
103 


MADAME MARGOT 


not the woman I mean. The woman I 
meant was comely . . . and had a beau- 
tiful daughter named Gabrielle!” He 
turned away, shuddering. 

She wore old rags for robes, an old 
freloche upon her head, in nowise re- 
straining the unkempt coils of her hair 
hanging matted upon her neck. Her 
cheeks hung slack and dark and dingy; 
her lusterless locks were felted into a 
tangled web that had grown gray with 
lint; her frowsy chin was stained as 
with walnut hulls. She was falling 
apart like an old house with nobody liv- 
ing in it, swore black oaths with a foul 
mouth, cursed all who crossed her path, 
ate like a beast food fit for beasts, her 
fevered sun of glory set, — gone, gone, 
gone. Down she went, like the stuffs 
in her shop, from velours ras to coton 
croisSj down, down to oblivion, down to 
104 


MADAME MARGOT 


the dusty corner of death. She spat in 
the dirt : e m^en ficher she said. 


She hated a priest, and never knelt 
at a confessional again. 

She did not die in the great house 
where she had passed the days of her 
power; every place she dwelt in sank 
into decay, the swifter where its integ- 
rity seemed permanent and secure; 
nothing purged the ambiguous spell 
which dragged them down together to 
the dust. The great house stood a ruin 
above a ruined court, a wreck of its for- 
mer pride and splendor, black and foul; 
the fountain had fallen long ago, its 
pipes strangled and eaten away to 
crusts of lead and thready ribs of iron 
in the sand. Lilac lane was gone; there 
was no lane there any more, and had 
105 


MADAME MARGOT 


been none for years; there was no trace 
of where it ran, its hedge-rows or its 
gardens, or of Margot’s cottage other 
than a mouldering heap of broken 
brick, bleak rafters of the fallen roof, 
and one stark, fallen gable; of Gabri- 
elle’s garden nothing remained. 

Margot died in a dirty hovel in an 
unkempt alleyway, in the midst of a 
negro quarter, where, if one beat a 
drum or caused an instrument of an or- 
chestra to sound, the people swarmed 
from the tenements hke ants out of a 
hill. The place was fallen and foul, and 
filled with beggary; and that is the end 
of a tenement; for beggars are like dis- 
temper, the place where they have lived 
is hard to cure. All the houses in the 
alley were filthy; but none was filthy 
as hers. 

There was a tremendous storm that 
106 


MADAME MARGOT 


night. Her house was ablaze with light ; 
the little tailor who lived next door said, 
“Aha! Mother Go-go has company!” 
But the only person seen was one of 
the religious sort, a tall man, with a 
face like an unpleasant taste. 

The thunder was terrific; the storm 
wild beyond compare. The wind blew 
with a sound like wild, gigantic laugh- 
ter. “Ff-ff-iF!” went the gale; the 
gusts howled through the tailor’s house; 
the whole place shook; the blinds 
banged and crashed; the wind wailed, 
and sucked down the chimney with a 
sound like awful weeping; the little 
tailor’s soul was filled with a sense of 
enormous terror. 

All night long the thunder rolled like 
the laughter of an angry god. Dis- 
lodged by the tremendous concussions 
the cockroaches flew out of the walls; 
107 


MADAME MARGOT 


and, in the morning, after the storm, 
the parrakeets which lived in the trees 
were all turned gray as ashes. 

The windows and doors of Old 
Mother Go-go’s house were standing 
open wide. It was plain that they had 
stood open all night, and that the rain 
had beaten into the house unopposed. 

This, however, occasioned but brief 
surprise. When they peered in at the 
door the rats were playing around the 
floor with the beads of a broken rosary. 

^ A priest came, hurrying in. He did 
not stay in long. When he came out 
his face was white as a sheet and his 
lips were drawn and gray. 

Those who prepare the dead came. 
They stood on the threshold peeping 
and queerly looking in at the door. 

A gray mist filled the place like a 
cloud, through which things were visible. 

108 


MADAME MARGOT 


The rooms were damp as an old vault, 
and full of a death-like smell; the walls 
were covered with green mould; the 
woodwork was rotten. The candles had 
guttered and dripped and gone out ; the 
floor was bespattered with tallow. All 
around the rooms were coffers of linen 
and lace, ^'coffres tres beaiuVj coffres 
mignonSy de dressouer compagnons; 
coffres de hoys qui pmnt n" empire; 
madres et jaimes comme dref^ All the 
coffers were open, and everything that 
was in them was tossed wildly about the 
floor; not one piece of the lovely old 
stuff s, as yellow as wax, but was black- 
ened by showers of soot and trampled 
under foot by the neighbor’s goat, the 
print of whose hoofs was everywhere. 

And Madame Margot? 

Heh! God had designed her for 
tragedy; but here was comedy. Mar- 
109 


MADAME MARGOT 


got lay stretched out on the floor, as 
black as ebony; dead, among the ashes 
and soot, charred like a fallen star. 

The coroner found that the woman 
had died of the visitation of God; but 
Doe Gou, the tailor, said simply, “Has 
God feet like a goat?” 

The bishop refused to have masses 
said for the repose of her pitiful soul; 
and they would not allow her to be 
buried in St. Sebastian’s graveyard. 
The potter’s field was the place for her; 
her color was too peculiar. 

Too black to be buried among the 
white, too white to lie down with the 
black, she was buried, in secret, in her 
own garden, under the magnolia-trees. 

And that was the end of Madame 
Margot. 


110 






i 



APPENDIX 


4ft. 













CONCERNING THE LEGEND OF 
MADAME MARGOT 

Much argument having arisen as to the 
origin of the legend of “Madame Margot”, 
as to whether or not it is a true legend or 
merely an invention of my own . . . and much 
speculation having arisen as to the identity 
of the persons involved in the story, (except- 
ing the Devil, concerning whose identity no 
questions have been asked), some statement 
of the facts seem due and just: 

• The story of “Madame Margot” is a 
genuine folk-legend or tradition, not an in- 
vention of the writer. It had its origin in 
the Old Charleston which vanished with the 
Ancient Regime. 

It is unnecessary to say that “Madame 
Margot’s” name was not “Marguerite 
Lagoux.” There is nothing to be gained by 
bringing her real name into the light. The 
pseudonym, “Margot Lagoux,” conveys the 
essence of the facts, and does as well. 

The sources from which were drawn the 
details of the story were various. The au- 
thorities were, first, an eminent attorney of 
the city, who gave me the facts surrounding 
the woman’s singular death and the disposi- 

III 


tion of her extensive property, of which he 
had personal knowledge; Mrs. K., a well- 
known monthly nurse, now twenty years de- 
ceased; Eliza Burns, a colored nurse em- 
ployed in my family; and the late Francis 
Nipson, at one time sanitary inspector of 
the City, now some years dead, whose knowl- 
edge of the seamy side of life in Old Charles- 
ton was as profound as it was extraordi- 
nary. From one or two trustworthy colored 
sources also were gleaned picturesque de- 
tails concerning the Devil and his business 
with mankind. 

The identity of the chief actors in the story 
is closely enough established by the follow- 
ing facts. 

“Marguerite Lagoux,” so to call the wo- 
man from whose peculiarity and strange 
misfortunes this extraordinary legend grew, 
was the daughter of San Domingan refugees, 
who fled from that unlucky island during the 
negro insurrections and massacres of all mu- 
lattoes and white persons which followed 
the French Revolution, between the years 
1791 and 1800. 

Many of these unfortunates, stripped of 
their property, escaping by the very hair of 
their heads, sought refuge in Charleston, 
where their descendants still remain. 

“Margot” herself, being born in this coun- 

IV 


try, was by old custom called “creole that 
is to say, native to the land, not emigre nor 
refugee. This name was applied among the 
refugees only to those born in this country, 
and had no reference whatever to their color. 
The term “creole"’ is still, I believe, so ap- 
plied in New Orleans, to fresh eggs, to dis- 
tinguish from the general such eggs as have 
been laid in one’s own yard. 

“Margot” was quadroon or octoroon ; it is 
uncertain which. It is, however, certain, and 
certified by those who saw her in the hey- 
day of her fortunes, that she was very beau- 
tiful. She was, as many of her sort are, pos- 
sessed of a perilous loveliness. 

She carried on a highly successful and 
well-patronized millinery business some- 
where on the fashionable western, or “shil- 
ling side” of King street, “above Mignot’s 
Garden, a little above the Bend.” 

It has become impossible now exactly to 
locate the site of Margot’s shop. “Mignot’s 
Garden” stood upon the eastern, or “six- 
penny side” of King street, where Rughei- 
mer’s Sons’ tailoring establishment stands 
today; the remains of the “Garden” were 
still discernible there when Rugheimers’ 
shop was building. If “Margot’s” shop was 
“above the Bend in King street,” as tradi- 
tion affirms, it must have stood a consider- 

V 


able way above Mignot’s. Closer identifi- 
cation, however, is now impossible, as all 
who knew are dead. 

It is possible, however, to locate the site 
of Margot’s cottage with the garden where 
the legend begins, which, as tradition states, 
“stood in Lilac Lane, a passage between two 
estates.” 

Many years ago a lane ran in back of the 
old Hummel Pharmacy at the northwest 
corner of King and George streets. This 
lane traversed the center of the city block 
circumscribed by King, George, St. Philip 
and Calhoun streets. Twenty years ago I 
explored the locality. The senior clerk in 
the pharmacy, then a man advanced in years, 
could not remember the time when there had 
been a lane running in behind the old shop. 
There still remained, however, irregularly 
disposed within the center of the block, a 
small group of unkempt cottages and the be- 
draggled remains of a dejected garden or 
two, having a narrow and squalid entry from 
St. Philip street, a bit above Greene, on the 
east side, near the College. This grimy en- 
try, which at one time ran completely 
through the block to King street, gave, and 
still gives, access to all that is left of Lilac 
Lane, the forgotten foot-path running in- 
ward northerly from George street. 

VI 


There were no Persian lilacs, such as are 
familiar to New England; the lane took its 
title from two large trees of the Melia Aze- 
darach, “Pride of India,’' or “Indian Lilac,” 
so-called from the large, loose panicles of 
pale purple flowers they bear and their re- 
semblance to the bloom of the fragrant lilac. 
These Indian lilac trees stood at the George 
street entrance to the forgotten lane, one at 
either hand ; and from them the passage was 
named. Trees, passage, cottage and gardens 
all have disappeared together. But twenty- 
five years ago the ruins of “Madame Mar- 
got’s cottage” still stood, although, as the 
legend states, “Lilac Lane was gone; there 
was no lane there any more, and had been 
none for years ; there was no trace of where 
it ran, of its hedgerows or its gardens, nor of 
Margot’s cottage, other than a mouldering 
heap of broken brick, bleak rafters of the 
fallen roof, and one stark fallen gable; of 
Gabrielle‘s garden nothing remained.” 

That was the exact case ; the lilac trees at 
the southern entry were gone; business 
houses in King street had appropriated and 
cut off the narrow entry from the east ; the 
ruin of Margot’s house still stood, about the 
center of the block, in a matted tangle of 
weeds and shrubbery. Here and there among 
the weeds could be discerned, still projecting 


VII 


from the earth, the brick edgings and forgot- 
ten borders of the lost garden. From King 
street westward business has encroached up- 
on the ground ; across its northern end is the 
Garden Theatre; on the south the parking- 
space of the Gloria theatre in George street 
has covered and obliterated all traces of 
Margot’s cottage ; and of Gabrielle’s garden 
nothing whatever remains. 

The group of little houses in the midst of 
a city block, with their small gardens, shrubs 
and trees, was at one time the residence of a 
number of more and less respectable free 
people of color who here made their unob- 
trusive homes. 

It is a fact that “Margot Lagoux” the mil- 
liner, had exquisite taste, and that her shop 
was patronized by fashionable folk and by 
the patrician element of a haughty city. 
For a time “Margot” maintained the look of 
a respectable woman. 

She had a daughter, even fairer and more 
beautiful than herself, and nearer white; so 
near obliteration of the black as probably to 
fall within the degree of color then legally 
declared to be white at least in the eyes of 
the law, and entitled to all the rights that 
were the jealous privilege of the white. 

It is, today, impossible, and at any time, 
except for the gratification of an acrid curi- 

VIII 


osity, would have been unprofitable to un- 
earth the truth concerning the parentage of 
‘‘Gabrielle Lagoux.” 

Her name was, of course, no more ''Gabri- 
elle Lagoux” than her mother’s name was 
“Marguerite;” but “Gabrielle” goes just as 
far and is as fair. 

She was, of course, the illegitimate daugh- 
ter of the man who “played the devil” in the 
story, not fancifully, as superstition avers, 
nor picturesquely, as the legend has it, but 
practically. 

Who he was is another thing that is no 
matter now. He was a man of wealth, whose 
tastes were as bad as his birth was good and 
his position prominent. “Margot,” the King 
street milliner, “a free woman of color,” was 
his mistress. 

As “Gabrielle” came to adolescence and 
her indisputable loveliness verged on wo- 
manhood, either pitying her beauty or 
touched by a sudden penetrating sense of 
responsibility for her being, fearing that she 
should become a thing no better than her 
mother, moved by shame, may be, or pity, 
or by a certain gross affection, facing the 
tragic facts, her father interfered in “Gabri- 
elle’s” behalf ; she disappeared, and was 
never again seen in Charleston. Years came 
and went ; she never came back ; nor did she 

IX 


and her mother meet again ; but, in a western 
city, presumed to have been New Orleans, 
she was carefully educated, lavishly main- 
tained, and, coming to maturity with a rich 
dower to supplement her beauty, was, as if 
white, married to a young white man, name 
unknown, and beyond present speculation, 
but that he was said to be of excellent fam- 
ily, and, with her marriage, passed forever 
out of sight and knowledge. Her subsequent 
fate, or that of any children she may have 
borne, or of her children’s children, specula- 
tively interesting as that may be, is lost in 
shadow, and is just as well unknown. 

All of which is quite romantic in its way. 
Besides her daughter, *'Gabrielle,” “Margot” 
had two sons, less fortunate in parentage 
than “Gabrielle,” and of no value whatever 
to the legend. They had no quality or dis- 
tinction, and did not rise above their base 
inheritance. One left Carolina, and in a 
northern community passed for white, until, 
upon the eve of marriage to a white young 
woman of decent place, some unknown wind 
or rumor blew in upon his story, and he fled 
before the degradation of his birth. The two 
sons inherited a considerable fortune, and 
dispersed it in ill-advised adventures. 

At the time of “Gabrielle’s” disappearance, 
“Margot’s” covert occupation seems to have 

X 


been uncovered ; fashionable patronage with- 
drew itself and she retired from business to 
private life. 

Her beauty was notorious ; her riches were 
comlmon repute ; her haughty insolence was 
possibly equal to both ; once committed to 
such a course, one of her caste has no reason 
for modesty nor for a retiring disposition. 
She forsook her cottage in Lilac Lane and 
dwelt in a handsome house, well-equipped 
with everything that in that day made life 
luxurious or appeased the unscrupulous 
vanity of women of her kind. 

This house still stands, degraded and 
much fallen, in a neighborhood once distin- 
guished, but for many years fallen from its 
high estate. It was, in its day, a notable 
house, and had, at one time, a famous gar- 
den of roses. No graveyard was immedi- 
ately adjacent; but one was near enough to 
have made a sombre impression upon the 
occupants of the house ; and on a heavy night 
in summer, at the hour when twilight fades, 
and all colors and scents grow emphatic, 
standing upon the high front-steps of the 
once-sumptuous house where “Margot’' 
dwelt, the air is sick with the smell of the 
faded four-o’clocks withering in the grave- 
yard and the heated air chilled and musty 
from the dampness of the shadows beneath 

XI 


the graveyard trees. In this once really 
stately mansion ‘‘Margot” dwelt in her gold- 
en prime : the house is not to be more spe- 
cifically located, being now an honest home. 

“Margot” dressed as she chose, in blazing 
silks, and kept her handsome carriage, in 
spite of sumptuary laws forbidding such ele- 
gance of dress or such vehicular display to 
those who had negro blood in their veins. 
Dressed as she chose, she drove about the 
streets of the city at will, flouting the law, 
immune to interference, not through her in- 
solent beauty, but through the protective 
power of her patron. 

Many guesses have been made as to her 
identity; but, thus far, no one has identified 
“Margot.” 

Money she had a plenty, invested with 
great shrewdness in bonds and real estate by 
the advice of her privileged patron ; the facts 
are substantially as stated in the story : by 
wise purchase of real estate she became a 
person of large property in the city, owned 
several plantations, and had an agent to 
manage her affairs. 

Popular superstition did the rest among 
the ignorant and the lowly, by whom, from 
immemorial time, it has been habitual to ex- 
plain all otherwise inexplicable accumula- 
tions of wealth as the result of traffic with 


XII 


the Devil, who, without doubt, is responsible 
for many huge accumulations of undenomi- 
nated money. 

Her beauty, her obscure origin, her sinis- 
ter bright golden life, her great wealth, gave 
rise to a legend explanatory of her riches, 
her power, and her position, as superstition 
has always explained them in the past in 
countless legends and folk-tales, by traffic 
with the Prince of Darkness, her soul for 
riches, place and power ; but, in this instance, 
by a singular touch of pathos and tragedy, 
also for her daughter’s salvation from ruin 
and degradation, which rescue lay in being, 
or ‘"going to” white. 

The singular thing in the story is that, as 
the legend states, as her daughter went to 
white, “Margot” went to black; and, as her 
wealth increased, she paid the price in queer 
deterioration, or reversion to type, growing 
more and more sloven with the passage of 
the years, more degraded, darker and more 
dirty, until she had sunk to the slums, as 
foul as, or fouler than, any unclean hag that 
haunted the tenements. Wealth did not save 
nor custom keep her from degradation. Sur- 
rounded by the accumulated material of for- 
tune, with laces, linen, satin and silks degen- 
erating in neglect, with rich furniture about 
her and choice wines in her cellar . . of which 


XIII 


it is competently said that she took too much 
. . she ended her days in a dirty hovel, 
stained, bedraggled, and so dusky of face 
that at her death, one negro informant as- 
sured the writer in all seriousness, ‘Vishing 
to bury her as white, the doctors had to skin 
her . . because she was turned African black.’" 

Silks, satins, laces and linens were ruined 
by dampness, mildew and decay. The wines 
from her cellar were sold at the partition of 
her estate, and were drunk at gentlemen’s 
tables, being of exquisite quality and of 
notable vintages. 

The facts of this case I had from men of 
the uppermost social level; the legend and 
superstition from below. For ignorance and 
superstition soon and almost invariably sur- 
round personages of singular and withdrawn 
character with strange belief : of such was 
''Madame Margot.” 

The moral of the tale is what you will. 
It has no moral. Or, in fact, perhaps it has 
several. I did not write the legend with any 
moral in view, and I make no effort to draw 
one. I wrote the story simply for the pleas- 
ure of telling it ; and told it as I found it, re- 
gardless of a moral, for the sheer delight of 
putting strange and perhaps not unbeautiful 
garments upon a drab and sordid tale. 

One is not sure that a mother should be 


XIV 


condemned who gave her own soul as sacri- 
fice for her daughter’s purity and happiness ; 
but I am not sure either that to pass off a 
colored girl as white upon an unsuspecting 
husband can be construed as an admirable 
act. In truth, I am not sure that even the 
willing sacrifice of a mother’s soul warrants 
anyone save the Devil himself, progenitor 
of all evil, in securing such an end. Such 
judgments I leave for higher authority. 

Altogether, as its stands, this legend is a 
queer and oddly godless tale, though it is 
strange and pitiful that mortal beauty should 
be fouled, or thrown away, or cursed, or that 
youth and loveliness should become party 
to social crime. 

But, since I did not invent the tale, I guar- 
antee no moral. I leave it to those who love 
a moral to extract one from the tale. One 
strange fact remains to be added to the 
truths of the story: “Madame Margot” did 
turn black, or was to such degree darkened 
as to resemble a native African : she was the 
victim of that strange malady, Addison’s 
disease, in which the skin of even the most 
pallid Caucasian becomes duskily pigmented 
with an increasing swarthiness until death 
intervenes to close the tragedy. Such was 
in fact the fate of “Marguerite Lagoux.” 

After her death the lane where she had 


XV 


dwelt remained for years a locale of ill-omen 
and misfortune. It was held by school-boys 
to be most unlucky and rash to pass the 
mouth of Lilac Lane where it debouched in- 
to George street ; and among the lads it was 
held long in confident belief that the boy 
who foolishly braved the passage of that 
ominous thoroughfare was certain to be 
thrashed that day within an inch of his life. 
The suicide of a woman who hanged herself 
upon a tree cast a shadow upon the King 
street entry; shunned by the superstitious 
and timorous its use as a thoroughfare fell 
away; and within a few years past it was 
taken over by adjoining business-houses and 
closed to passage. 

The uneasy ghost of Madame Margot, if 
there be such things between heaven and 
earth, should be seen, a misty revenant, by 
night, in the shadows of the parking-space 
behind the Gloria theatre, in George street. 


THE NEXT VOLUME OF THIS SERIES 
WILL BE THE STRANGE STORY OF THE 
DOCTOR TO THE DEAD. 



I 


* 


'iSv^ 


' ■ '’'tlC 


LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 


